The board of Ainslie School, along with the school, the P&C and a number of parents are concerned with the application for a 7am-1am liquor licence and the development of a bar/restaurant called "Bonkers" directly opposite the school.

The board's main concerns with this proposal are: 1. An increase in traffic on Elder Street of both cars and delivery vehicles, and the impact of that on the safety of children arriving at and leaving the School. An increase in traffic and parked cars will make the already unsustainable parking and traffic issues around the school more dangerous for our children.

2. An increase of foot traffic through the school while children are using the school's grounds. Mr Bulum stated in the article mentioned above that "lunch is between 11am and 2pm when students are in class". However, children also eat lunch and are actually in the playground between 12.30pm and 1.30pm.

3. Anti-social behaviour, such as drinking, drunken behaviour and possibly smoking visible to students from the school grounds. While school hours are nominally 9am-3pm, taking into consideration before- and after-school care provided on the Elder Street side of the school grounds, actual hours are 7.30am-6pm.

4. A potential increase in vandalism to the school, with increased patronage, as I am sure this venue would expect, comes the potential for increase in vandalism to the school and its grounds — the school bears the costs for repairing damage caused by vandalism — potentially at the expense of educational activities.

While I did mention the possibility of sexual activity on the schools grounds as another concern, it is less likely and nowhere near as alarming as the points noted above.

Mel McDonald, Ainslie School Board chair

Voter betrayers

Labor-Greens votes have shown their true colours and elected a government that has betrayed democracy, common sense, fair play and rational decision making.

The voter betrayers are also happy to see more debt at the expense of the rest of us.

I am in favour of the finding the 28 years of missing good transport planning, and even to see an above-ground tram to help with dealing with congestion.

Can we expect those same voters will now buy themselves a MYWAY card pronto and leave the car at home?

R. Morison, Canberra Public Transport Alliance, Theodore

Tram a sham

The ACT Labor Party's commitment to a Gungahlin-Civic tram will condemn many old, disabled, or pregnant women to an extra time-wasting journey, probably by bus, to catch the tram.

Also many working people who will not have that time to spare.

Both groups will be forced into taxis, or their own cars which need parking space, with resulting expense.

Who benefits from that, apart from pollies and their rich allies. No more tram contracts. Waste not want not.

Bryan Lobascher, Chifley

Get on board

While Chris Carder (Letters, November 4) may pooh-pooh a transport panacea based on driverless vehicles, the facts are that the transition could begin today. Don't think of driverless vehicles being thrown into the traffic mix on day one. When you limit the situations in which driverless vehicles must operate, you greatly increase their feasibility.

The transition will be based on driverless vehicles that traverse a segregated roadway that has been "autonomy enabled". Bus ways are good examples. The main road engineering required is to ensure that all forms of signalling are compatible with the driverless technology and to support the lane following technology with all-weather lane definition.

Driverless buses could provide an effectively unlimited service on a segregated Gungahlin-Woden spine by 2025. The plan would be to operate the hybrid buses with drivers in complete control until the technology is accepted.

A. Smith, Farrer

Grab bagged

Often you will hear "can I grab your credit card" or "can I grab your name".

Customers in a café will grab a coffee and the proprietor grabs his four dollars. Everybody "grabs" everything nowadays.

This ugly word – which is defined in the Oxford dictionary as "seize suddenly" or "appropriate rapaciously" – is in common use particularly among the young. How long will it be, I wonder, before "will you grab this woman to be your lawful wedded wife ..." becomes part of the wedding ceremony?

Derek Bulpitt, Downer

LBW a shocker

The decision of the umpire to give Steve Smith out leg before wicket on the second day of the First Test against South Africa in Perth must rate as an absolute shocker. As I recall from my cricket-playing and umpiring days, the adage has always been that, where any shred of doubt exists, the decision must go in favour of the batsman.

Smith was almost three metres down the wicket when struck by the ball. How on earth could anyone predict, in all certainty, that the ball would undoubtedly have gone on to hit the stumps?

Also why didn't the third umpire overrule the decision of the on field umpire or at least alert him to the element of doubt ?

Andrew Rowe, Florey

With the Senate in electoral chaos, Scott Morrison insulting the chairman of the ABC for not following his draconian ideas of wage negotiation, and Peter Dutton and Malcolm Turnbull's midnight madness of a lunatic immigration law, the government of the country has practically ceased to exist.

Perhaps we will become like Belgium, which managed very well without a government for over two years!

Richard Keys, Ainslie

Turnbull's shame

The unthinkable almost came to pass. Malcolm Turnbull was going to pass the anti-union Australian Building and Construction Commission legislation with the support of a failed builder-cum-senator, who has now been found out to have been wrongly allowed to stand for Parliament. And he still goes around the country telling the few people still listening to him that he wants to bring the rule of law to the union movement!

Shame on you, Mr Turnbull.

John Rodriguez, Florey

Trio worthy of award

The 2016 One Nation "Aussie Aussie Aussie" award goes to Malcolm Turnbull and Peter Dutton for "You'll Never Call Australia Home". The judges felt this inspirational piece truly represented the values of One Nation. Second prize to Kevin Rudd for "Why do they keep blaming me" and third prize to Bill Shorten for "I'd like to help but my hands are tied". Oi Oi Oi.

Barbara and Rick Godfrey, Lyneham

The humane way

Like Terry Walls (Letters, November 4) I, too, would like to see a more humane approach taken to refugees on Manus Island and Nauru. I do, however, get a little sick of members of the ACT Labor Party urging the federal ALP to "grow a spine" and "stick to their principles".

Jon Stanhope, for example, can take the high moral ground because he comes from a constituency that always votes Labor. Since self-government, the vast majority of chief ministers have been from the ALP. This is not the case across Australia. Over the last 68 years Labor has been the opposition party in the Australian Parliament for around 70 per cent of the time.

Sure it is great to have principles but you get things done only when you are in government. Tony Abbott hounded Gillard/Rudd out of office by mounting a relentless attack on the "stop the boats" issue. Sure, it may have been unprincipled but it worked.

To return to office, Bill Shorten and his colleagues need to pursue an immigration policy that is both humane and acceptable to the majority of the Australian electorate.

Mike Reddy, Curtin

Myths buster

Thank you, Frank O'Shea ("Ah, November, when get-out-of-purgatory-free cards were there for a mere indulgence or two", October 31, p14) for exploding the twin myths of purgatory and multiverse. Strange bedfellows, but both invented to disguise inconvenient truths in Byzantine theology or modern pseudo-science.

Professor Brian Cox is a respected science educator who presented the multiverse idea (an infinite number of parallel universes each containing our identical copies) simply as something fascinating for mind games. In his landmark book Just Six Numbers (1999) the Astronomer Royal Martin Rees showed that the chance our universe "just happened" is less than one in 1 followed by about 200 zeroes, because these six parameters (which include constants like the force strengths inside atomic nuclei) collectively must be that precise.

Such unimaginably high odds mean that our universe did not happen by accident. In his last chapter Rees floated the multiverse idea to avoid mindful creation.

Why ever not many parallel universes? Well, look at it this way. The chance probability of our unlikely universe is a lot less than one. Other slightly different parallel universes are similarly improbable. In probability theory, the chance that two or more random events occur together is the product of their individual probabilities (check it out with dice). The product of an infinite array of numbers less than one is, eventually, zero. Thus a multiverse is statistically forbidden.

Does it matter? Actually, yes. Profoundly. We must all work out the reason why for ourselves. What then? Ah, what then ... (apologies to S.T. Coleridge).

Peter Cooper, Greenway

One of many gods

J. Halgren (Letters, November 4) is mistaken, the god of Israel certainly does not deserve a capital letter. The god of the tribe of Israel in the northern mountains of Canaan was one of the many early local gods of the Middle East. Where the religion of this god was unique at that time was the use of genocide to expand its tribal area to its "promised land".

Its religious text is a catalogue of the justification for destroying other tribes, with their god's promise that the conquered land would become owned by the tribe that worshipped him. Like the Balfour declaration, it took no account of the existing people of the land. It was an early form of the murderous religious fanaticism of the Christian crusades, and that now being pushed by ISIL. Such fanaticism would form no part of the philosophy of the one true God, if she exists.

Paul Fitzwarryne, Yarralumla

Rehab justice

Various articles and reports written before and after the Don Dale Detention Centre incidents expose problems. We need more than a series of isolated inquiries into single aspects of criminal justice systems in single states or territories.

Anyone can get caught up in the court system. Innocent people do get convicted by mistake. That's why we have an appeals process.

We need to avoid locking people up in places where they suffer greater crimes than those for which they are sentenced.

We need to avoid crippling legal expenses that destroy anyone's ability to lead a normal life.

We need to make the best possible restitution to victims of crime.

While a system of justice without some element of retribution would not be socially accepted, this should not be done to the extent it denies rehabilitation.

A system that makes the good bad and the bad worse is in no one's interest.

David Osborne, Higgins

DRAWING A FINE LINE

The nation owes Bill Leak and his ilk a thank you for their contribution to the sanity of the nation. Those who would like to tell us exactly how to live our lives cannot stand criticism. Without the cartoonist, we would be very much the poorer.

Roy George,Caravonica, Qld

HISTORY LESSON NEEDED

Sorry, Barbara Godfrey (Letters, November 3), but there are at least two other incidents that would qualify as the "worst humanitarian crisis the world has ever seen": take your pick from the 1932-33 Ukraine famine or the Holocaust.

Ken McPhan, Spence

IDENTITY PARADE

Re Janet Rickwood's take on how our government can ID "boat people" 20-30 years from now (Letters, November 3) . Simple really, tattoo a number inside their wrists – it's been done before.

Tom Lindsay, Monash

WHICH GOD?

I am genuinely happy for Evelyn Bean and J. Halgren in their unqualified belief in their Christian god (Letters, November 4). How then do they convince followers of all the other gods that their equally sincere beliefs must therefore be wrong?

Eric Hunter, Cook

WALK THAT TALK

Why don't the critics of the Turnbull government's ayslum seeker policies (Letters, November 1) do something constructive about the issue like sponsoring a family, finding them accommodation and a job, and helping them to settle in to the way of life here? Words are cheap.

Richard Brandt, Bruce

BRAINS TRUST

Think carefully before you vote on Tuesday, American. You may regard this as just another presidential election, but the rest of the world views it as an IQ test.

Adrian Sever, Hawker

AH, MELANIA

The world seems to be in fear and trepidation of Donald Trump becoming president of the US. I think that is a real fear, but what about the prospect of his wife becoming first lady?

Probyn Steer, Hawker

HIS WORDS, NOT MINE

After reading a few lines of "A man of few words" (Panorama, November 5, pp2-3) I discovered that "we are horrified by Trump". What? Who decided that I was horrified?

How pretentious of Ian Warden, the author, to tell me what I feel about Trump. I may be deranged, but Trump is anything but a "moron" or a "poltroon".

Noelle Roux, Chifley

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